Books: Fuzzy Future

DESTINY’S MAN—T. F. Tweed—Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).

When Publisher John Farrar received from Colonel Tweed in London the manuscript for Gabriel Over the White House, he sensed a good thing. Roosevelt was in the thick of his 1932 campaign. The Bonus Army had set a new pattern for direct action at Washington. The U. S. was groaning and growling for a political miracle to lift it from the depths. The young red-headed Manhattan publisher had the Tweed manuscript extensively reworked by a U. S. hack for a pittance and Gabriel Over the White House became startlingly prophetic of the New Deal’s early endeavors. The new President was so impressed that he had the film made from the book shown twice at the White House and Pundit Walter Lippmann composed a high-minded sermon on its lack of intrinsic importance. Now, without benefit of a rewrite-man, the Briton who learned his political realism under David Lloyd George has tried it again, in another fuzzy apocalyptic novel of the future.

Destiny’s Man is pitched to interest those who look for a succession of shocks in a Central Europe made uneasy by Hitler, the assassination of Alexander of Yugoslavia, the blows to French ascendancy in the Danube Valley.

The Grand Elector Max has succeeded in creating Danubia out of Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia. Upon an economic stage set with starvation wages and rock-bottom farm prices steps a new Messiah. He is Johann Zimri, son of a Hungarian plumberwho combines a knowledge of psychotherapy and osteopathy with the perfect bedside manner. Scores take to his simple belief that a little of God is in every man. With this magic, Zimri wins over an important industrialist, the Danubia youth movement, a onetime mistress of the Grand Elector, a leading journalist. In spite of this backing, the Messiah sins against the omnipotent State. Tried for sedition, he is acquitted only to be killed by an enraged urban mob that believes he is hindering the coming war with Italy. The finale is fittingly ironic.

When Magda, the ex-mistress, shoots Elector Max, Zimri’s Brotherhood of Man seems about to triumph, for the Minister of Agriculture becomes dictator and summons the Zimri group to power. But after the followers of the late Messiah get one good look at the clever plan of attacking Italy, they turn sternly from peace to war. A satire on the nature of power, Destiny’s Man can be recommended to all surviving anarchists.